


Funeral Games

by Sath



Series: Aimantation [3]
Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Sex, Angst, Canon Era, Enjolras rejects your top/bottom dynamics and substitutes his own, Illustrated, Implied or Off-stage Domestic Violence, Kink Meme, M/M, Oral Sex, Roleplay, Sad Blowjobs, safflower oil: not just for cooking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-19
Updated: 2013-12-15
Packaged: 2017-12-12 07:18:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/808823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sath/pseuds/Sath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Enjolras was not afraid to die; he was reluctant to kill. His values were antique – he was a modern Achilles, uncompromising in his pride but magnificent in wrath. The nineteenth century, with its usual fecklessness, had produced an ideal soldier who wanted nothing of war.</p><p>Exhausted by preparing for the events of June 5, Enjolras spends the night before the barricade with Grantaire.</p><p>Formerly titled <i>Oculos Videndo Conscelero</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. oration upon the death of lamarque

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nisiedraws](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nisiedraws/gifts).



Lamarque’s funeral was tomorrow. Les Amis de l’ABC had taken over the Musain for what would probably be the last time, gathering around a large map of Paris with Enjolras at the head of the table. The night had turned sweltering and humid, though the rain that had threatened all day still hadn’t come. Grantaire sat in self-imposed exile with Joly, who was carefully nursing his head cold in the hopes of clearing it up in time for the riot. He watched Enjolras leaning over the map while he listened to Feuilly promise support from the tannery workers at the Glacière. It was the first time Grantaire had been close to Enjolras since he’d visited the studio. Enjolras had spent every day since Lamarque’s death negotiating with the other societies and confirming local support, becoming almost a stranger even to Combeferre.

“A propos of the revolution, it is decidedly abberent that Barius is in wub,” Joly said.

“He’s not even here,” Grantaire replied. 

“By point exagly.” Joly paused to vigorously blow his nose on a kerchief monogrammed with LdM. “Marius is not here, and therefore, must be elsewhere. Where? With dear Cosette.” 

“It’s hateful,” Grantaire groaned. “Marius will marry his Marian and settle into utter respectability. The Pontmercys will dutifully have intercourse only after feast days and the most difficult decision M. Pontmercy will face is which men’s club to join, the choice settled by the predilections of his law partners.” 

Joly frowned, which quickly turned into a sneeze. “We would never do such a thing. How would you settle, if you chose?” 

Grantaire’s wine glass was empty, so he drank from Joly’s. He was in a state almost approaching sobriety, thanks to the earnest efforts of his friends to drag him to every rallying point throughout the day. Whenever he tried to wander off for stronger drink, someone else would take him by the arm and guide him to the next place. Only Bossuet had had enough mercy to break for lunch. Grantaire had seen every gun store in Paris by late afternoon and the planned site for the barricade was only two streets down from his flat. 

“I’d move to a fishing village and forge Titians,” Grantaire said. “My mistress would be an oyster wife with hands like mill-stones and when the police came to arrest me, she’d toss me over her shoulder and swim us to Porquerolles.” 

“Your ideal woman can shoulder you and your misdeeds? You dream so lightly,” Joly said. He seemed to be waiting for Grantaire to say something more, but then Enjolras raised his voice. “Enjolras has started on Lamarque.” 

Enjolras hadn’t so much started on Lamarque as he was pushing the man to Olympus. 

“It irritates me, hearing Enjolras go on about one of Bonaparte’s generals,” Grantaire said, loosening his cravat so sweat would no longer prickle at his neck. “Lamarque was only a man, which Enjolras knows very well. His finest achievement was killing four horses in one battle. How well his men must’ve eaten after Wagram, all those who survived the cannons! How glorious for Lamarque, to prosper under one petty tyrant and then be sainted for chafing under a shadow of a king. He translated Ossian in exile: ‘I was a lovely tree, in thy presence, Oscar.’ And he compares this insipid fraud to Tasso’s _Armida!_ Armida’s gestures, her smiles, the glances of her eyes! What would Lamarque make of Thomas Rowley? He’d surely weep over Freedom’s bloodstained vest. Lamarque’s a liberal and a philosopher, huzzah. He died like so many of his soldiers – shitting himself to death.” 

At some point during his speech, Grantaire had begun to address the whole room. Joly whispered “sit down and be quiet, you sot,” but Grantaire didn’t even remember rising to his feet. Jehan was hiding a smile behind his hand and Bahorel seemed ready to laugh, though the rest of his friends varied between displeased and angry.

“If you’re going to be a disgrace, drink elsewhere,” Enjolras said, with the same brusqueness to his voice that he used for dealing with the police. He was about to say something more when Marius burst into the room.

“I’ve come to fight with you,” Marius declared breathlessly, holding up a red flag because his coltish enthusiasm demanded a prop. “I want to fight.” 

Marius’s girl must have deserted him. Courfeyrac laughed and clapped Marius on the back, drawing him into their circle while Enjolras looked proud. Grantaire felt both relieved and annoyed that Marius had sucked up all the attention in the room, but he took the opportunity to sneak out nevertheless. He started laughing at himself on the stairs, running into one of the gamins Enjolras had running back and forth with messages. The gamin bounced off of him, but Grantaire nearly fell over. 

“Careful,” Jehan said, steadying Grantaire by the shoulders. “If anyone causes one of these little ones to stumble, it would be better for him to be drowned in the depths of the sea.” 

“That’s not quite how the verse goes.” 

“Well, you tried to leave without saying goodbye. I was offended.” 

The streets were still lit, unlike in 1830. The people must be postponing the destruction until the funeral, or perhaps they’d learned who suffered most from the dark. Jehan stepped alongside Grantaire, putting his arm around Grantaire’s waist. Though Jehan was always well-spoken, Grantaire found his silences equally companionable. 

“Did you like my funeral oration?” Grantaire asked as they turned on to his own street, the Rue du Cygne. 

“I have no sympathy with Lamarque – he does more good by dying than living. In the future, I hope that there are no more men like him. Enjolras wants soldiers as little as I do. ” 

“He has a funny way of showing it when he makes soldiers out of children.” 

“Enjolras cannot comprehend a child any more than he can the motions of the planets. He will, I fear, soon understand what that lack means. I was at the Hôtel de Ville in 1830; Enjolras was locked up in his rooms, his father his jailer. Knowing death has a way of making good men compassionate.” 

They stopped at the door to Grantaire’s building. Jehan was smiling. He let go of Grantaire’s waist, but took his hand instead. 

“You will regret it, if you do not come tomorrow,” Jehan said. 

“Tell Enjolras I have no interest in his funeral arrangements. I would only make it go badly.” 

“I will come wake you early in the morning.” 

“I won’t hear you,” Grantaire replied. “I’ll be dead drunk.”

“Then I’ll use your spare key.” Jehan leaned forward and kissed Grantaire on the cheek. “Sleep well, my friend.” 

Jehan whistled _La Carmagnole_ as he walked away.

~

The night dragged on. Grantaire had run out of brandy, but felt alarmingly sober. He wasn’t used to spending so much time in his own flat and his alcohol stores had suffered for it. Grantaire opened his shutters so he could disinterestedly sketch the folds of his bed sheets. 

Jehan had been at the taking of the Hôtel de Ville. Did he kill anyone? That must have been why Jehan had never told Grantaire that he’d fought before. Grantaire had thought Jehan’s weeping over Géricault’s _Raft of the Medusa_ had been pure sensitivity – Jehan was appallingly tender hearted – but it had been experience instead that had moved him to tears. As for Enjolras’s imprisonment during the Three Glorious Days, his father must have had the resolution of a stone, though it explained Enjolras’s unexpected ability to pick locks. 

There was a squabble going on outside his door again. The loud bray was clearly Caillat, who sounded drunker, meaner, and bigger than usual. The crying must be his wife, but the other male voice, the calm one Caillat was arguing with, could only belong to Enjolras. 

“Think you can tell me what to do to my wife, brat?” Caillat bellowed. “I’ll break your face.” 

Grantaire started rushing out of his flat. Enjolras was using the informal ‘you’, which meant he wasn’t merely angry, but contemptuous. 

“I am not telling you what to do with your wife. I am telling you what I think of men like you.” 

Grantaire heard a sharp cry from Mme Caillat and a thud from someone hitting the floorboards. He threw open the door to see Caillat poleaxed, clutching his nose. Blood was already starting to drip down his front. Mme Caillat was limp against the wall, watching her husband out of a swollen eye. Enjolras was impassive, only a flush in his cheeks betraying that he’d just knocked a much larger man flat. 

“Son of a bitch,” Caillat muttered. His eyes were crossed as he stared down his nose. 

“You are a parasite upon this woman’s suffering. Without you, she will be forced into the factories or still greater shame; she’s enslaved to you by her children. When you strike her, that is not the end of your blow. Your children are its end, their children its inheritors. The boys will imitate you, become violent and spiteful and stupid while the girls will imitate her and suffer in silence. Men like you are why we are overrun with petty masters at every turn, men who dread the man above them, so they torment whoever is below. It is the teleology of fear. You would beggar our future for no reason but your own drunken meanness.”

Caillat, condemned, only looked at Enjolras dumbly. Grantaire reached for Enjolras’s wrist. “Please come inside before Caillat gets up and hits you back.” 

“He already tried,” Enjolras said. “He’s too drunk to get up.”

“Let’s not test him.” 

Enjolras allowed himself to be pulled into the room. Grantaire immediately threw the lock and considered putting a chair against the door. He was acutely aware that he hadn’t cleaned his flat in months, and Enjolras was now standing in it. The dust alone was going to settle into Enjolras’s hair and turn him prematurely grey. Enjolras shrugged off his coat and after casting his eyes about the room for a coat hanger (there was none), set it on the table next to the library books and empty wine bottles. 

“That was none of your business,” Grantaire said. 

“No one has dared to tell that man he has done wrong before.” 

“Because if God had ever been moved to make a man from a shaved bear, the result would’ve been my neighbour. He will only beat her harder now.” 

“I don’t think he could do any worse,” Enjolras replied. “He may, if only once, think better of it.” 

“If Caillat remembers tonight at all, he’ll take out your philosophy on my hide. When you return from the barricades and find me dead in the gutter of the new world, please say something inspiring at my funeral.” 

Enjolras crossed his arms and leaned against the table. “What would you like me to say?” 

Grantaire couldn’t think of anything at all, for he had no qualities Enjolras would see fit to eulogize. Enjolras would certainly try to say something he found fitting; he was dutiful and reliable to a fault with his friends, though Grantaire only counted among them peripherally. He wondered if Enjolras would get that twist to his lip, or perhaps an embarrassed blush, as he listed ‘life drawing’ among Grantaire’s notable accomplishments. 

“I’m no rhetorician,” he replied, unbalanced by Enjolras’s ability to reverse a conversation just by asking Grantaire to clarify. 

“The modern history faculty would disagree. I’m no longer welcome at their lectures after I turned in what you wrote for me about the Empire in Egypt. You kept your word.”

It seemed that Enjolras’s brief and acrimonious flirtation with the modern history program had only lasted two months. Bossuet would owe him twenty sous the next time they met. 

“Did you come here just to tell me that? Surely you’d rather spend the night alone, or with Combeferre?”

“Combeferre is asleep. He recommended that I do the same,” Enjolras said. He flexed his right hand, frowning down at the light speckling of blood on his knuckles, which were starting to swell. “It will hurt when I hold a rifle tomorrow, as it should.” 

Enjolras seemed profoundly tired. It wasn’t in how he carried himself, which was as upright as always, but in the subdued tone of his voice and the dark circles under his eyes. 

“You need to wrap your hand, if you want to be able to use it,” Grantaire said. He fetched the cleanest bit of cloth in his flat, a patterned cravat so ghastly-looking even Jehan would not wear it. Enjolras held out his hand without needing to be asked while Grantaire carefully bound his knuckles. “I used to box, before drinking and I became so intimate. You might have broken your hand on my neighbour’s face, and then you’d have no way to pull the trigger of human progress.”

“Knowing that killing is necessary does not make it easy, or forgivable, or even wholly right. I know tomorrow will be just, because our cause is our duty and we will act with humanity; it is not doubt that troubles me. Combeferre says that even the tyrannicide knows a murderer’s agony, and yet he can rest while my own thoughts are nothing but darkness.” 

Enjolras was not afraid to die; he was reluctant to kill. His values were antique – he was a modern Achilles, uncompromising in his pride but magnificent in wrath. The nineteenth century, with its usual fecklessness, had produced an ideal soldier who wanted nothing of war. 

“The vessel of revolution can arrive at port only on a sea reddened by torrents of blood,” Grantaire said. He was still holding Enjolras’s hand, stroking Enjolras’s slender wrist with his thumb. Grantaire shifted to stand at Enjolras’s side and rest his head on Enjolras’s shoulder, trying to do with his presence what he certainly couldn’t do with what he said. 

“I thought you preferred Hébert.” 

“Do people want to know what your true crimes are, those which would perhaps lead both of you to the gallows if we had failed in our great undertaking? You, Duc d'Orléans, it is that of not having been a good for nothing like the other former princes. Fuck yes: these are your crimes, goddammit.” 

Grantaire knew more of Hébert by heart than the man deserved. He’d first read the word ‘fuck’ in Père Duchesne when he was eight and pursuing more of that guilty thrill, he’d read through most of Hébert’s outraged philippics. 

“I think you almost made a point,” Enjolras said. 

“What a strange night this is turning out to be – surely you could be spending it better with someone else. Where are the others?” 

“With their mistresses, mostly.” 

“Glad to know where I stand,” Grantaire said.

He felt Enjolras go tense and withdraw his hand just to cross his arms again. “You are not–” 

“Last in your thoughts?” Grantaire added, trying to save the situation before Enjolras closed himself off completely. 

“I thought you were incapable of seriousness, but you write like a republican.”

“It’s only an imitation. I could also play an Orléanist, but that would displease you.” 

“That has never stopped you before,” Enjolras replied. “Must you always be so flippant?”

Grantaire choked back the word ‘yes’, his first and probably last moment of self-restraint for the night. How could he be serious about the brutal farce of a rebellion unfolding before him? The revolution could go fuck itself. Enjolras’s expression had tightened into a scowl – Grantaire had ruined whatever the fragile thing between them had been with his typical contrariness. 

“ _Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor_ ,” Grantaire said. “I cannot follow your ideas, but I admire you.” 

“I am insignificant; there is only the ideal,” Enjolras replied. He seemed to be running the line over in his head; he was unlikely to remember any of the _Metamorphoses_ based on their subject alone. “How well do you remember what I say? Could you imitate me now, without time to prepare?” 

The real question, _how do you see me,_ made the room feel suddenly too small. 

“But do not repeat what I have already said; I know how good your memory is,” Enjolras said.

“Your accusations of plagiarism wound me, comrade.”

Grantaire straightened his back and tried to hold his head more like Enjolras did, who, like Alexander, tended to tilt his head in moments of thought. He cleared his throat, and prepared to sham utter conviction. 

“Citizens! You live in a nation that has aspired to the heights of greatness – the first since Rome to reject the foul parasite, that monster of the old world, Monarchy – and yet we are shadowed still under its gilded crown. But we are shadowed only, for from these blighted lands the light of equality will arise, purified, glorified, in the crucible of sacrifice!” 

Enjolras was looking at Grantaire with interest; whether he was amused, flattered, or horrified, Grantaire couldn’t tell. 

“Do I truly sound like that?” 

“A little. I’m afraid I have nothing to say, though I think I managed some of your musicality.”

“I’m a man, not a harp,” Enjolras said. 

“I’d like to see you imitate me with half so much attention. There’s nothing to drink left in here, so you’ll have to act.”

“I don’t need to become besotted to imitate you, though it’s your most obvious quality.” 

Grantaire hardly had time to wonder what he meant before Enjolras pressed himself against his front, tilting up Grantaire’s face with his bandaged hand. His touch was gentle, and he hesitantly put his other hand on Grantaire’s hip, as if he were trying to keep Grantaire from startling. Enjolras kissed him, carefully bringing their lips together entirely unlike the closed kiss on the méridienne or the brush of his mouth in the Musain. Grantaire’s pulse beat heavily against Enjolras’s hand on his throat and Grantaire grabbed blindly at Enjolras’s waistcoat, needing to do something with his hands as Enjolras’s tongue entered his mouth. Enjolras slipped his arm around Grantaire’s waist to move him closer, kissing Grantaire with a tenderness that was hard to bear. He broke off the kiss slowly, letting Grantaire drag it out by following his mouth. 

“Is this really how you think I would respond?” Enjolras whispered, leaning in near enough for Grantaire to feel his breath against his neck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to plinytheyounger, for her amazing classical translation work and source hunting, without which the fic would have stalled even worse than it did and would have been at least 50% poorer in use and abuse of Latin. 
> 
> 1\. Joly's "A propos of the revolution, it is decidedly abberent that Barius is in wub" is lifted directly from the Hapgood translation, from the 'Preliminary Gayeties' chapter. 
> 
> 2\. Ossian was an 'ancient Celtic poet' invented by James McPherson in 1760. Ossian's poems were celebrated by the Romantic movement, though there was doubt as to their authenticity from the start - Grantaire is not so much wildly ahead of his time, but skeptical. 'I was a lovely tree in thy presence' is an actual line. 
> 
> 3\. Torquato Tasso was an Italian poet whose best known work was _Jerusalem Delivered_ in 1580. The witch Armida enchants the hero Rinaldo and tries to keep him from completing his Christian mission. Rossini wrote the opera 'Armida' in 1817. 
> 
> 4\. Thomas Rowley was the creation of Thomas Chatterton. Chatterton wrote in a pseudo-medieval style (that was woefully bad, sorry Chatterton fans) and committed suicide at 17. The Romantic movement was quite pleased with him as a result - Alfred de Vigny wrote a play entitled 'Chatterton' in 1835. 
> 
> 5\. 'Freedom's bloodstained vest' refers to Chatterton's 'Ode to Liberty'. The line itself is 'Whan Freedom, dreste yn blodde-steyned veste, to everie knyghte her warre-songe sunge'.
> 
> 6\. The 'Duc d'Orléans' that Hébert is defending within the actual context of the quote is King Louis-Philippe's father, who was executed by guillotine. 
> 
> 7\. 'Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor' - Grantaire is not translating this line of the Metamorphoses accurately. The usual translation is 'I see the better path, and approve, but choose the worse.' It shows up in lines 20-21 of book 7. He's quoting Medea here, who betrayed her kingdom because of her love for Jason, and who in turn was betrayed by Jason after they had married. Medea revenged herself against Jason by murdering their children.


	2. the belvedere off his plinth

“Is this really how you think I would respond?” Enjolras whispered, leaning in near enough for Grantaire to feel his breath against his neck. 

Realizing what Enjolras was asking of him coiled around Grantaire like a chill. Enjolras wanted to relieve the guilt of what he had yet to do, for someone else to take the weight of the coming day from his shoulders, and somehow this impossible task had fallen to Grantaire. It was a comedy no one could laugh at; Enjolras with all his strength and honesty, trying at last to make a crutch of the man who needed him most. Even in his exhaustion Enjolras was still hopeful of setting things to rights, to reverse the downward trajectory of their relationship. Against the gape of the revolutionary precipice before him, Enjolras was standing alone and Grantaire could only think of selfishly taking what Enjolras offered him because there was _nothing_ Grantaire could give in return. 

Grantaire pushed Enjolras away roughly, making him stumble. He was surprised for only a moment before he registered that Grantaire was mimicking him still and a brief look of relief passed over his face. While Enjolras had only ever been unintentionally cold, Grantaire would have to be consciously cruel. He wished he could be brave instead. 

“I don’t understand what I see in you,” Grantaire said, because he truly had no idea. 

“I’ve been under the impression you don’t see much of me at all,” Enjolras replied, his speech slipping into the same cadence as Grantaire’s, only with Enjolras’s clear tone and Occitan vowels. 

“I notice when you make a nuisance of yourself, like tonight. What was the point of it?” Of course, Enjolras had no answer. “Come here.” 

Enjolras obedient set Grantaire’s skin on edge; Grantaire had to steel himself from backing further against the table when Enjolras moved closer. He knew the next step, but he couldn’t bring himself to say it. 

“Let me do something for you,” Enjolras said, dropping to his knees. He put his hands to Grantaire’s hips and hesitated, looking to Grantaire for direction. Grantaire ran his fingers through Enjolras’s hair and tilted his head so he could run his thumb along the curve of Enjolras’s lip. Enjolras looked up at him through his lashes with an unnerving passivity that settled tightly in Grantaire’s chest. Unbuttoning his fly, Grantaire took out his hardening prick and pressed the tip to Enjolras’s mouth; Enjolras opened for him without a word and let Grantaire guide him forward until he could feel the wetness of his tongue as Enjolras finally closed his eyes and began to suck. Grantaire kept his hand on Enjolras’s jaw to keep him from trying to take more than he could, feeling too much of Enjolras’s teeth but the slow slide of his tongue on the underside of Grantaire’s prick had him groaning.

“Careful,” Grantaire said, hearing and God help him, feeling, Enjolras start to choke. Grantaire pulled Enjolras off, unable to take his eyes off the string of spit hanging between Enjolras’s lip and his cock. It was more than obscene; it was a desecration. Everything they had done before hadn’t been as painful as this, the sight of Enjolras on his knees with a reddened mouth and upturned eyes. 

“I’m sorry,” Enjolras said. Grantaire’s hand tightened in Enjolras’s hair only to disguise the trembling in his fingers. 

“Get up,” he said through clenched teeth. When Enjolras rose to his feet, Grantaire roughly grabbed hold of him and shoved him backwards towards the bed. Enjolras’s knees buckled with no trace of resistance as Grantaire pushed him down onto the narrow mattress. Slipping off Grantaire’s waistcoat, Enjolras tugged at his shirt with an eagerness that would have been pleasing if Grantaire didn’t know it was a mirror of his own prurience. Grantaire toed off his boots and helped Enjolras strip him of the last of his clothes, somehow ending up underneath Enjolras during the process. He’d never been naked in front of Enjolras before - another one of the strange omissions in what they had already done. Now that they were in bed together, they had abruptly run out of script. While Grantaire hesitated, Enjolras turned affectionate, kissing him again and settling on top of Grantaire with an insistent press of his hips. 

“I want you to fuck me,” Enjolras said.

Grantaire had never wanted to say ‘pardon?’ so badly before in his life, because Enjolras had obviously not just said what he had so unambiguously enunciated while pressing his erection against Grantaire’s. 

“But you’re too inexperienced – it’ll probably be uncomfortable and I’m not easy to take,” Grantaire babbled, knowing that the words spilling from his mouth grew more stupid with every breath until they erupted into a crescendo of pure absurdity. 

“What would you know? You’re a virgin,” Enjolras replied, leaving it up to context to indicate that he was making a joke. Grantaire tucked his head into the crook of Enjolras’s neck to muffle his laughter. It wasn’t until Enjolras joined him, so quietly Grantaire only felt it through the vibrations of his throat, that Grantaire realized Enjolras was nervous. They had somehow become almost comfortable with each other, even if it was never when they should be, never with friends or when they spoke, only in these short moments of closeness. Grantaire would rather it simply hurt. He kissed along the tense line of Enjolras’s jaw until he relaxed, and the small crease in his brow faded. 

“Were you being serious?” Grantaire said. “Or was that merely what you think I would say? I am not entirely a _pathic_ \- half the time, at most.” 

“Does the answer matter to you?” Enjolras had said those last few words as himself, and they carried the force of a slap. 

“Not as much as it should.” 

He expected some judgment from Enjolras; he even hoped for it, yet Enjolras gave no indication that he cared. So much of what Enjolras had done or said seemed like a test that Grantaire could have easily passed, if he’d only resisted the body Enjolras kept granting him. But the threat of tomorrow left them no time for old uncertainties, and the buttons of Enjolras’s waistcoat digging into his ribs were a prickling reminder of what they’d left unfinished. 

“It’s what I want,” Enjolras said, adopting Grantaire’s voice again and closing the brief moment of honesty. He lowered his eyes as if he feared Grantaire’s reply, his mouth downturned in a meek expression Grantaire knew for his own. 

“Then get off me so I can fetch something.” 

Enjolras rolled onto his side, leaving Grantaire a little cold despite the summer heat. He resisted the urge to put on his dressing gown just to walk through his own flat – if Enjolras wanted to make a quality assessment of his bare arse, it was unlikely to change his mind. 

“Take your clothes off,” Grantaire said, rifling through the cabinet. A few weeks ago he’d bought safflower oil for cooking instead of drying oil paint by mistake and optimistically kept it on the off-chance he ever decided to cook in the shared kitchen. Apparently, buggering Enjolras on the night before an armed insurrection was going to happen before he ever got around to making ratatouille. It was so ridiculous he should have expected it. 

“Is your bed only figuratively lousy, or literally?” Enjolras asked. He hesitated with his waistcoat askew and shirt untied, pushing himself up on his bare toes to untuck his shirttails; it was a scene from a genre painting, perhaps _The Sleep of Reason_ or _St. Michael Administering to the Abject on the Rue du Cygne_. 

“It is a figurative louse in fact. Pursue the metaphor for too long and you will encounter the anti-louse, a bed that has yet cleaner sheets than mine but the perfection of which will frustrate all attempts at sodomy.” 

That was the crux of the problem. Grantaire’s definition of Enjolras was sliding out of the abstract. He had never fantasized about Enjolras naked in his bed, even in his guiltier fantasies. It would be like rubbing off to the Apollo Belvedere in front of God and the Pope. He’d once imagined Enjolras ordering him to masturbate while Grantaire kneeled on the filthy floor, never looking up from his papers. Grantaire had kissed his hand and been slapped for it, like a minor irritation, and that brought him over the edge. Seeing Enjolras as he really was the next day, radiant and removed from the nastiness Grantaire had given him, had filled Grantaire with self-disgust. 

Grantaire found the safflower oil and gave it a quick sniff to make sure it hadn’t turned. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you naked before,” he said, walking back to the bed and leaving the oil on the nightstand. 

“I hope you don’t find it too disappointing,” Enjolras replied, not letting Grantaire escape his own bad joke. His body language was off – Grantaire did not sit so straight, though the way Enjolras imitated how Grantaire sat with his legs splayed both distracted and disturbed. “Irma Boissy said that my face was impossible, but my body has posed for Delacroix.” 

“Yes, you weren’t wearing trousers then either.”

Grantaire wondered why they had never tried to simply talk before. But talk honestly, instead of Enjolras parroting back Grantaire’s trivialities. There was too much of Grantaire in the curl of Enjolras’s lip, Grantaire’s own self displayed before him through the body he’d desired but never wanted. He couldn’t stand to hear himself anymore, not from Enjolras, so he leaned down to press Enjolras into a kiss. Grantaire would play Enjolras badly, if it meant feeling the warmth of his mouth. Perhaps it was not so strange for Enjolras to _want_ as well, to sigh low in his throat as he pulled Grantaire into bed with him, and whatever Enjolras’s real need was, that was the more frightening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Behold! I have not abandoned this fic, and bring you a sad blowjob. 
> 
> [Nisie](http://nisiedrawsstuff.tumblr.com) drew a fantastic, inspiring sketch for this chapter, so check it out [here](http://nisiedrawsstuff.tumblr.com/post/55216149085/pants-heavily-with-anticipation-so-sath-has). Direct all the love you can to her, because otherwise it probably would have been another two months before an update happened. 
> 
> Only a few notes for this chapter. 
> 
> 1\. Originally derived from the Greek, παθικός, literally meaning 'remaining passive' and used by the Romans to indicate the receiving partner during anal sex. Linguistic note courtesy of [Pliny](http://www.plinytheyounger.tumblr.com).
> 
> 2\. One of Antoine-Jean Gros's most famous paintings was _Napoleon Bonaparte Visiting the Plague-Stricken in Jaffa_ , which Grantaire has now adapted to describe his own life. _Sleep of Reason_ is referring to Goya's etching, _The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters_.
> 
> 3\. As an example of how God created nothing without a purpose, even the supremely awkward giraffe, Charles Fourier posited the existence of an anti-giraffe: "And when the societary order has enabled us to become adept at the use of truth and the virtues which are excluded from our lives at present, a new creation will provide us, in the anti-giraffe, with a great and magnificent servant whose qualities will far surpass the good qualities of the reindeer, which so excites our envy and arouses our anger at nature for having deprived us of it."
> 
> 4\. For Grantaire's experience modeling trouser-less for Delacroix, read my pug friend [Brostoevsky](http://www.bro-stoevsky.tumblr.com)'s [In the evening, when the wind blows from above](http://archiveofourown.org/works/837051).


	3. the heart accounted for

He couldn’t seem to find his balance as Enjolras reached for him, and Grantaire would have fallen on top of him if Enjolras hadn’t been holding him steady. It was a relief that Enjolras wasn’t too human up close, that even though Grantaire could feel Enjolras’s cock hard against his stomach, there was still that uncanny strength in his hands. Grantaire ended the kiss so he could shift his teeth to Enjolras’s neck, marking his pale skin while Enjolras sighed and rocked against him. 

“Grantaire,” Enjolras said, his voice neither severe nor quite his own. “Get on with it.” 

“I would never say that in these circumstances – and you had been playing me so well before. Had I you draped over me, working exquisitely with your mouth, I would have no voice to complain.” 

Enjolras smiled at him. He looked too young when he was unguarded, an expression Grantaire saw often directed at Combeferre and Courfeyrac but never himself. They would have taken better care with Enjolras; God, they’d have talked Enjolras back into absolute faith, instead of pouring his crisis over into Grantaire’s ratty mattress. 

“Try harder,” Enjolras replied, arching one eyebrow. Grantaire reached for the oil to coat his fingers and hid the beginnings of a frown by kissing Enjolras’s palm, holding him there until the moment passed and he was able to grin. 

“Tell me if I’m a bit much for you,” Grantaire said, moving his hand between Enjolras’s legs. Enjolras parted his thighs and exhaled when Grantaire pressed into him, angling his head back onto the cheap pillow.

“You’ve done this to yourself before.” 

A blush crept over Enjolras’s face, but he said nothing to deny it. He gasped, almost too quietly to hear, as Grantaire went fully inside. Enjolras was too sensitive, too responsive, and it was with his shiver that Grantaire could tell he’d found the right spot. 

“How much?” 

“Enough,” Enjolras said, his voice roughening. 

“You’re not such a priest after all.”

“No one is.” 

Grantaire added a second finger, watching Enjolras bite his lip against the discomfort. His eyes were focused upwards, that same unfixed blue of a soldier saint on a church wall. Enjolras’s breathing shifted faster and Grantaire leaned closer, the bed creaking as he changed the angle of his fingers to go further in. With his gaze on the ceiling, Enjolras seemed caught up in something unseen, yet his hands kept seeking out Grantaire, running down his arms and then pulling Grantaire’s free hand to his untouched prick. The harsh line of his mouth eased as Grantaire started to stroke him, and the easy way Enjolras arched his back in pleasure threatened to unravel what little Grantaire felt he’d understood of the night. 

“Ah, God,” Enjolras sighed. “Do it.” 

“If you’re certain,” Grantaire said, already groping for the oil. He used the rest of it on his cock, feeling inexplicably modest under Enjolras’s gaze. They’d gone past hiding inside a theatrical, and his own skin felt unsatisfactory. Enjolras had wrapped his legs around Grantaire while he vacillated, the light pressure of his fingers on Grantaire’s upper arms a reminder that Enjolras was a body after all. There was nothing ultimately separating Enjolras from anyone else Grantaire had fucked, and dithering wasn’t going to make the encounter the sublime union or hasty defilement Grantaire had expected. 

He took a moment just to stare at Enjolras spread out underneath him, fixing it in his memory for good or ill. Enjolras had a perfectly ordinary birthmark on his right hip, which Grantaire covered with his thumb as he guided himself into him, Enjolras barely seeming to breathe when Grantaire entered him completely. Grantaire kept his head tilted downwards, hoping that the fall of his hair would hide whatever expression he was making. Only the soft sound of Enjolras exhaling brought Grantaire out of the overwhelming feel of him.

“You probably won’t tell me if it hurts too much, will you?” Grantaire asked. 

“It doesn’t.” 

Grantaire looked up to see that Enjolras had thrown his arm over his eyes, one hand fisted in the sheets. It seemed too distant, even for Grantaire, even for sex, so he leaned forward to kiss Enjolras’s mouth. The movement brought them closer together until Grantaire was thrusting shallowly, kissing Enjolras with something like possession. Grantaire stupidly wanted to stay the way they were, keeping each other on the blunt edge of desire, but the tightness of Enjolras’s body around his cock brought out a more insistent need. 

He straightened his back and went deeper, bringing a clipped “ _God!_ ” from Enjolras. There was a bit of the countryside in how readily Enjolras blasphemed, as if sex were just another garment hung in the sacristy. The headboard banged into the wall with the next thrust, a quotidian nuisance which Enjolras neatly took care of by bracing his arms against it. The pose made Enjolras seem even more vulnerable, his arms in the tender curve of a pierced St. Sebastian. It was an image which Grantaire couldn’t escape, as Enjolras closed his eyes and his body seemed to hang in Grantaire’s arms like someone dead. Grantaire wished his desire would lessen, yet his treacherous prick stayed hard and Grantaire could only give himself over to it.

“Please,” Grantaire whispered, hoping for some response. 

Enjolras’s sluggishly opened his eyes, his face too still but he lightly squeezed Grantaire’s hand on his hip. It wasn’t _Grantaire_ who needed comfort, he wasn’t the one getting fucked on a cheap bed in a grim little parody of companionship. 

“Relax,” said Enjolras, dragging his hands along Grantaire’s sides just to tangle his fingers in his hair. “Lie back.” 

“Already impatient with me?” 

“No more than anyone else,” Enjolras replied, which meant he was quite impatient. “But I want to try other things, if this will be the only time.”

How natural for Enjolras to conclude that the only proper way to lose one’s virginity before martyrdom was by doing it thoroughly and in a variety of styles. Changing positions in a bed made to fit one person reluctantly was incredibly awkward, but less so than pointed erotic roleplay. Grantaire was soon stretched out beneath Enjolras, who had to leave one leg half-dangling off the mattress as he straddled him. 

“I never realized quite how small my furniture was until you put yourself in it,” Grantaire said. 

“You never considered it?” 

Enjolras relaxed his thighs, allowing his own weight to press Grantaire back inside him. 

“Do toads dream of heaven?” Grantaire asked, the cleverer response lost somewhere between his cock and his brain.

“They dream of other toads, and I ask you not to abuse that metaphor.” 

Grantaire would have asked him how he was so sure of a toad’s dreams, how had Enjolras become the designated representative of toads, were toads republican; an Egyptian plague of toads upon Grantaire’s tongue were silenced by Enjolras beginning to move. Grantaire was finally able to stop thinking with the long, willing length of Enjolras’s body above him. There was a tender furrow of concentration between Enjolras’s brows and his mouth was tensed against going slack with pleasure. Enjolras gasped when Grantaire thrust upwards, disrupting their old rhythm and shifting them into something quicker. Grantaire couldn’t stop himself from sitting up, pulling Enjolras into his arms and making everything so much more difficult, but now he could touch Enjolras as he pleased and see Enjolras’s slight smile when Grantaire cussed against the angle. He drew one arm around Enjolras’s shoulders and took him in hand, stroking him until Enjolras came calling on a month’s worth of saints. Grantaire followed only seconds behind him, holding Enjolras closer as the intensity of his orgasm nearly doubled him over. 

It was impossible for them to disentangle themselves with anything like grace, not that there’d been much of it between them before. Enjolras’s face looked sweet for the moment, the formalism of Leochares smoothed into the fleshiness of Bernini, but Grantaire knew from his own experience how swiftly men grew tired of a night’s company once they’d gotten off. 

“I’ll fetch a rag and a washbasin,” he said, because it was really the only thing worth mentioning. “You can have the bed and I’ll take the floor, unless you want to test Paris at this time of night, in which case I’ll make a token show of trying to stop you.”

“I’m not throwing you out of your own bed,” Enjolras replied. He extricated himself from Grantaire well enough, stepping heavily on the floor before stretching out his shoulders, the joints popping audibly. “Where’s the basin?” 

“To your left.” 

Grantaire surreptitiously reached for the second cleanest rag in his room, a three year old shirt he’d meant to have mended and forgotten underneath the bed, while Enjolras was washing off. He dusted off the shirt and tossed it at Enjolras’s head, which he caught with a muttered ‘thank you.’ Grantaire himself settled for soiling an already unfortunate pair of socks. When Enjolras moved to rejoin him in bed, Grantaire did his best to make room. There was no avoiding sleeping close together, even if they’d wanted to. The exhaustion which had briefly lifted from Enjolras’s face returned, his eyes seeming even more deeply lined than before. 

“That Latin line you used on me before - _video meliora, et cetera_ \- was it Seneca’s _Phaedra_?” Enjolras asked. 

“It was Ovid’s _Medea_ , if that will help you sleep.” 

Enjolras was clearly picking the play over by memory. Had he been thinking over that line the entire night? 

“There is nothing terrible in wanting me,” he said. 

“There is no good in it, either.” 

“It is not entirely one-sided; my abstinence is not inflexible.” 

Sleep kindly intervened between Grantaire and the need to reply.

~

Waking up with a figurative dagger between his temples and a mouth lined with sand was so routine for Grantaire it took him a few minutes to notice Enjolras’s arms around him, as everything else was conforming to his normal experience. He would blame the fact that he had tucked himself under Enjolras’s chin on their difference in height, and not as some needy nocturnal outpouring his body had performed without his consent. It was early enough in the morning that there was still very little light coming through his window, and there were only a few carts clattering through the street outside. The baker across from him was hurling invective at his incapable staff with so much skill Grantaire was starting to regret that he normally woke up too late to hear it.

Scraping sounds from the door being unlocked sent Grantaire into a panic. Caillat must have come to, beaten the landlord to death, and taken the key from the body. Grantaire was already halfway out of bed, having masterfully avoided waking Enjolras, before he saw Jehan’s concerned face. He’d dressed himself like an ordinary workingman for the day, even putting his hair back into an orderly queue. 

“Oh,” Jehan said, which was more than Grantaire wanted to say about the situation. “You’re who he went to last night.”

“An error on his part, as you can see.” 

Grantaire couldn’t get dressed fast enough to avoid Jehan’s helpful presence. He was still fiddling with his braces when Jehan pulled him into what his rent payment lovingly described as ‘alcove, curtain extra charge.’

“How are you?” Jehan asked. 

A less destructive question would have been, “what happened?” Jehan would go for someone’s throat out of pure _kindness_. 

“I took Enjolras to bed with me, how do you think I am?” 

Jehan winced at the statement less than Grantaire did.

“I suspected Enjolras might be Greek in nature as well as form,” Jehan said. 

“Why?” 

“The way he used to look at Combeferre. There was a loneliness in it.” 

Jehan was very sensitive to loneliness, because he generated so much of it within himself.

“I’ve always thought Enjolras was more like a statue,” Grantaire said. 

“No, you don’t. I think you see him better than anyone does.”

“I’ve seen more of him than anyone else has – how’s that for knowledge? I’ve had the chief on his knees. I know no better of him, and think worse of myself. If Lamarque is a man, so is Enjolras, and may God help us all.” 

“Enjolras doesn’t prize humanity so meanly as you. You would relegate every affection to basest sex just to confirm your low expectations. We are all men of clay, and the fact that the same hand who created you and I breathed life into Enjolras is a testimony to Grace, not intransigence.” 

“I will not say anything about your faith in man, but your faith in me is horribly misplaced.” Jehan squeezed Grantaire’s hand, and it was only with difficulty that Grantaire could resist yielding to the gesture. “Get to your barricade, Prouvaire. I’ll send off your leader shortly.” 

Whatever Jehan’s reply would have been was cut off by the sound of the sheets on the bed moving. There was nowhere to conceal Jehan from Enjolras’s bleary-eyed survey of the room, standing with one foot on the floor and the linens wrapped around him like a senatorial toga. 

“Prouvaire,” Enjolras said, very carefully. He didn’t seem embarrassed, though he had the unhappy air of someone whose personal life had just been dragged out for people to gawk over. “Good morning.” 

“Good morning, my friend,” Jehan replied. “I came here to recruit Grantaire.” 

“You’ll need the early start.” Enjolras adjusted the drape of his sheet. “Excuse me, but I must get dressed.” 

Jehan politely turned his back as Enjolras gathered his things off the floor, making a good show of putting himself together with only a little dishevelment. Enjolras’s curls were beyond saving from bedhead, but he still tried to fix them by helping himself to Grantaire’s pomade. 

“There. Do I look decent?” Enjolras asked, straightening his tie. Grantaire’s tongue was too leaden for him to say that the knot was still a bit askew. “Prouvaire, I know I do not need to ask for your silence, but I thank you for it. I’ll meet you later at the Quai Morland. Perhaps even you, Grantaire.” 

Jehan nodded. Enjolras gave Grantaire a long look, but had nothing more to say to him before rushing out. The moment the door closed, Grantaire rested his back against the wall and sighed. 

“Theatrical,” Jehan said, without irony. “But now you must come with us.”

Grantaire contemplated sneaking out of the window. Unfortunately, he was terribly out of shape for it. 

“To whose ends? Mine, or yours?” 

“Yours,” he replied, with the crooked little smile he reserved for his thorniest arguments. “I will appeal to your animal nature, and that is that you are amiable.”

“A pun with political aims.” 

“If Paris does not join our cause today, what will happen to Les Amis de l’ABC?” 

“Death, or prison. Perhaps only a bad day.” 

“And you will miss all of it.” 

“You’ve made the most convincing case for staying at home I could ever need.” 

“Do you value your life highly?”

“It’s a meagre existence, a subsistence farm upon the soul.”

Jehan cocked his head. Grantaire wished himself deaf, because that particular look of Jehan’s heralded a damning win. “Then you’d hardly be impoverished spending your life with your friends, whom you love.” 

“Are you saying I should hold my heart to accounts?” Grantaire started to laugh. Naturally, one of his few friends who _wasn’t_ a lawyer would press the hardest case. “I have always suffered for mathematics, and you would have me perish of them. Very well, he that dies pays all debts.”

Jehan smiled with a generous happiness Grantaire would have found excruciating in anyone else and took a folded red worker’s cap from his coat pocket. He beat the cap into shape and went on tiptoes to place it on Grantaire’s head. “Lest you go bareheaded into the dawn,” Jehan added. “I have already arranged our breakfast at the Corinthe, where Joly and Bossuet are waiting for us. I’ve heard the oysters are not entirely terrible, by virtue of being mostly bad.” 

Grantaire pulled the cap into a more comfortable position. There was absolutely no chance the day would not end in some wretchedness or other, and Grantaire planned on having the most minimal of parts; not a walk-on role, but rather, an imitation of the scenery he’d already perfected in the passion plays of his youth. 

As they left Grantaire’s flat behind, Grantaire put his arm around Jehan and tried to shield the morning sun from his eyes. “Death, death; oh, amiable, lovely death! Come, grin on me, and I will think thou smilest.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this final chapter pleases everyone who has been waiting months for this - real life intervened in a big way, but I've learned so much in the process of writing this. My deepest thanks go out to the many people who supported me during the writing of this!
> 
> Just in case you're not sad enough after finishing this, check out this [fantastic drawing](http://nisiedrawsstuff.tumblr.com/post/70454106386/what-what-heres-some-e-r-sleepy-cuddles-i-drew) Nisie did of how the snuggling went down. 
> 
> 1\. St. Sebastian was a really popular subject for painting because he gave them the opportunity to depict a mostly nude, hot young dude pierced all over with arrows. He was a Christian martyr and soldier saint who was executed by Diocletian in 288. Sebastian actually miraculously survived being shot full of arrows and was ultimately clubbed to death.
> 
> 2\. Leochares was a famous Greek sculptor in the fourth century BCE who was supposedly the original sculpture of the Apollo Belvedere, which currently only exists as a Roman copy. Don’t get me started about how a lot of ‘Roman copies’ were actually originals. 
> 
> 3\. Gian Lorenzo Bernini was one of the premier Italian sculptors of the Baroque period. His sculptures are renowned for their lifelike, sensual qualities.
> 
> 4\. Phaedra was the daughter of Minos and Pasiphaë – her half-brother was the Minotaur. Aphrodite made Phaedra fall in love with her stepson, Hippolytus, in order to punish Hippolytus for his rejecting Aphrodite’s advances to remain chastely devoted to Artemis. Since it was a famous Greek tragedy by Euripedes, naturally everything ends in death. The Roman playwright Seneca wrote his own _Phaedra_ tragedy in the first century CE, which is what Enjolras thought Grantaire was quoting. 
> 
> 5\. _Phèdre_ was a play by Racine first performed in 1677. Enjolras is quoting Hippolytus here, but with a twist: Hippolytus says “All know my abstinence inflexible: the daylight is not purer than my heart.” 
> 
> 6\. According to the Catechism of the Catholic church, “grace is favour, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life.” 
> 
> 7\. Grantaire drops two Shakespeare quotes here. The first is “he that dies pays all debts,” which is spoken by Stephano in _The Tempest_ , Act III, Scene 2. The second is “Death, death; oh, amiable, lovely death! Come, grin on me, and I will think thou smilest,” spoken by Constance in _King John_ , Act III, Scene 4. 
> 
> I'm not going to abandon this story just yet - the barricade remains.


End file.
